Let noun1 verb noun2

Data & scripts: https://t1p.de/letxbey

Data

  • ENCOW16BX (Schäfer & Bildhauer (2012))

  • webcorpus containing 9 billion tokens

  • downloaded data queried via CWB

Query

[lemma=“let”] [pos=“N.|PP.”][pos=“V.*”][pos=“DT”]?[pos=“N.*”]

Results

First observations

  • recurrent quotes, e.g. Let them eat cake

  • discourse-organizing and text-organizing semi-formulaic patterns, e.g. Let me explain, let us examine

  • proverbs, e.g. let bygones be bygones

Collostructional analysis

  • Multiple covarying collexeme analysis (Stefanowitsch & Gries (2005))

  • two variants:

    • (pro)noun1 - verb - noun2

    • verb - noun2

Results: noun1 - verb - noun2

Results: verb - noun2

Further observations

  • importance of discourse-structuring constructions, both with communication verbs (Let me say something, let me ask/answer a/the question) and in more “text-structuring” contexts: let us take/have a look, let you know the results

  • fixed chunks repeated numerous times (eat - cake, bygones - bygones)

  • overall, strong dominance of “communicative” / communication-structuring contexts

Limitations

  • complex NPs (more than one word) in the open slots disregarded

  • pronouns in the second open slot disregarded

  • some false positives due to annotation errors of the original data

  • context not taken into account (easy follow-up e.g. looking which items are preceded by don’t)

References

Schäfer, Roland & Felix Bildhauer. 2012. Building large corpora from the web using a new efficient tool chain. In Nicoletta Calzolari, Khalid Choukri, Terry Declerck, Mehmet Uğur Doğan, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Asuncion Moreno, Jan Odijk & Stelios Piperidis (eds.), 486493.
Stefanowitsch, Anatol & Stefan Th Gries. 2005. Covarying collexemes. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 1(1). 143.